The Darkest Room

WINTER 1962

The thermometer is showing zero, but there is no snow in Borgholm. I am wearing my old winter coat and feel like the country cousin I am as I walk along the straight streets of the town.

Markus is back on the island to visit his parents in Borgholm, and to see me. He is on leave from the barracks in Eksjö and is wearing his gray soldier’s uniform with stylish creases pressed in his pants.

The café where we have arranged to meet is full of decent, upstanding ladies who study me as I come in from the cold-cafés in small towns in Sweden are not the territory of young people, not yet.

“Hi, Mirja.”

Markus stands up politely as I walk over to the table.

“Hi there,” I reply.

He gives me an awkward little hug and I notice he has started using aftershave.

We haven’t seen each other for several months and the atmosphere is tense at first, but slowly we begin to talk. I haven’t got much to tell him from Eel Point-I mean, nothing

has happened there since he went away. But I ask him about life as a soldier and whether he lives in a tent like the one we built in the loft, and he says he does when he is out on exercises. His company has been in Norrland, he tells me, and it was minus thirty degrees. To keep warm, they had to pack so much snow all over the tent that it looked like an igloo.

Silence falls between us at the table.

“I thought we could carry on until spring,” I say eventually. “If you want. I could move closer to you, to Kalmar or something, then when you come out we could live in the same town…”

These are vague plans, but Markus smiles at me.

“Until the spring,” he says, brushing my cheek with his hand. His smile broadens, and he adds quietly: “Would you like to see my parents’ apartment, Mirja? It’s just around the corner. They’re not home today, but I’ve still got my old room…”

I nod and get up from my chair.

We make love for the first and last time in the bedroom Markus had when he was a boy. His bed is too small, so we drag the mattress onto the floor and lie there. The apartment is silent around us, but we fill it with the sound of our breathing. At first I am terrified that his parents will come in, but after a while I forget about them.

Markus is eager, yet careful. I think this is the first time for him too, but I dare not ask.

Am I careful enough? Hardly. I have no protection-this was something I could never have imagined would happen. And that’s exactly why it’s so wonderful.

Half an hour later we go our separate ways out on the street. It is a short farewell in the bitter wind, with a last clumsy embrace through the layers of clothes.

Markus goes back up to the apartment to pack before he catches the ferry across the sound, and I go off to the bus station to head back northward.

I am alone, but I can still feel his warmth against my body.

I would have liked to catch the train, but the trains have stopped running. All I can do is climb aboard the bus.

The atmosphere is gloomy among the small number of passengers, but it suits me. I feel like a lighthouse keeper on my way to a six-month tour of duty at the end of the world.

It is twilight when I get off to the south of Marnäs, and the wind is bitterly cold. In the grocery store in Rörby I buy food for myself and Torun, then walk home along the coast road.

I can see slate-gray clouds out at sea when I drop down onto the road to Eel Point. Strong winds are on their way to the island, and I quicken my pace. When the blizzard comes, you must be indoors, otherwise things could turn out as they did for Torun on the peat bog. Or even worse.

There are no lights in most of the windows when I reach the house, but in our little room there is a warm yellow glow.

Just as I am about to go in to Torun, I see out of the corner of my eye that something is flashing down by the water.

I turn my head and see that the lighthouses have been switched on before the night comes.

The northern lighthouse is also lit, glowing with a steady white light.

I put the bag of food down on the steps and walk across the courtyard, down toward the shore. The northern lighthouse continues to shine out.

As I stare at the tower something suddenly blows past me on the ground, something pale and rectangular.

Even before I catch up with it and pick it up, I know what it is.

A canvas. One of Torun’s blizzard paintings.

“So you’re back, are you, Mirja?” says a man’s voice. “Where have you been?”

I turn around. It’s Ragnar Davidsson, the eel fisherman,

walking toward me from the house. He is wearing his shiny oilskins, and he is not empty-handed.

In his arms he is carrying a great bundle of Torun’s paintings-fifteen or twenty of them.

I remember what he said about them in the outbuilding: It’s all just black and gray. Just a lot of dark colors… looks like crap.

“Ragnar…” I say. “What are you doing? Where are you going with my mother’s pictures?”

He walks past me, without stopping, and replies, “Down to the sea.”

“What did you say?”

“There’s no room for them,” he shouts back. “I’ve taken over the storeroom in the outbuilding. I’ll be keeping the eel nets there.”

I look at him in horror, then at the ghostly white light of the northern lighthouse. Then I turn my back on the sea and the wind and hurry back to the house and Torun.